Something Up With Which I Will Not Put
Apr. 26th, 2012 06:03 pmI rarely link to Cracked, because I'm sure y'all are already stuck there anyway, but god dammit I wish to share with you 7 Commonly Corrected Grammar Errors That Aren't Mistakes. Because even before I spent my college years examining how language changes, I was in high school wondering if I should point out that Strunk & White were full of shit.*
I agree with everything on the list--even the "literally" argument, although I admit it does make it harder to explain when you mean "literally" literally. I can think of a few to add, too. (I always use "lay" and "lie" carefully simply because I like the way they're constructed, but it does not matter at all how you really use them as long as others understand you. And in the continuing theme of "English is not Latin," by all means end your sentences with prepositions. It might be impossible in Latin, but in English it's quite a bit less awkward than the gyrations used to avoid it.)
But then, I'm the kind of person who assesses linguistic competence in LOLcat, so I may just be a loony descriptivist. Lotta fun, though.
*I also hated when an English teacher would get so carried away with them that they'd circle every use of the passive voice in red pen on my essays. It got so bad one year I turned it into a game: I strunked my essays till they followed the rules exactly, and made sure they were SUPER BORING. It got kind of fun doing ridiculous linguistic gymnastics to avoid a perfectly simple and understandable passive construction.
I agree with everything on the list--even the "literally" argument, although I admit it does make it harder to explain when you mean "literally" literally. I can think of a few to add, too. (I always use "lay" and "lie" carefully simply because I like the way they're constructed, but it does not matter at all how you really use them as long as others understand you. And in the continuing theme of "English is not Latin," by all means end your sentences with prepositions. It might be impossible in Latin, but in English it's quite a bit less awkward than the gyrations used to avoid it.)
But then, I'm the kind of person who assesses linguistic competence in LOLcat, so I may just be a loony descriptivist. Lotta fun, though.
*I also hated when an English teacher would get so carried away with them that they'd circle every use of the passive voice in red pen on my essays. It got so bad one year I turned it into a game: I strunked my essays till they followed the rules exactly, and made sure they were SUPER BORING. It got kind of fun doing ridiculous linguistic gymnastics to avoid a perfectly simple and understandable passive construction.